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Dogs, Books and Books About Dogs

As I pointed out in yesterday’s post, it would be a mistake to suggest that the fact I had a good day was the start of a trend. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t the start of one either just that we needed to see what would happen next.
Sunday ended up being a day of problems which then turned uneventful. I had a heck of a time falling asleep last night. I could not get comfortable at all for awhile and that was mostly because my legs itched like crazy. It kept me up way longer than I wanted to be. I also had trouble finding something to fall asleep to and settled on ‘The Simpsons’. If you don’t know, I have trouble with complete silence so usually listen to a book or watch TV as I drift off to sleep. Nothing seemed to work last night even when I could get comfortable. Eventually, the itching stopped and I was able to get comfortable and fall asleep.
The rest of the day I spent reading, exchanging some text message, listening to a podcast and working on a project which I will discuss below the cut.

My project is the result of my mild OCD tendencies. I have OCD but not a severe case, at least I don’t think so. I do some small things that most people would not notice if I didn’t point them out. When I’m standing in line at the checkout stand in the store and I find a box of candybars that has say three rows in it, I will try to make each row in the box even…like I said small stuff like that.
This OCD project is data related. I am working on adding information to all of the audiobooks in my iTunes library. This includes tagging them with the correct genres, release dates, publishers and so on. I can’t explain why I’m doing this beyond the OCD because there’s really no benefit to sorting them by any of those categories but I like knowing that all of the information is right. Perhaps my OCD isn’t so mild when you consider I have over 700 books in my library to do all of this for and I have to look up the info for each book. On the other hand, my OCD doesn’t make me spell check these posts so who can say?

Anyway, all was going well until I came to the book ‘Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know’ (link is for the Kindle version) by Alexandra Horowitz. Needless to say, I don’t know that I’ll be reading that book anytime soon. When Ginny was alive, I often wondered what she was thinking as things happened to or around her. I especially wondered what was going on in her head as she slept and would sometimes whimper in her sleep.
I’ve always loved dogs. I’ve been around dogs my whole life. Our family dog lived to be at least 18 years old and died just a few days after I got Ginny Losing her was tough but having gotten Ginny so recently softened the blow quite a bit. I haven’t been in the presence of a dog since Ginny died and haven’t gone this long without being around a dog since I was in college the Spring before I got Ginny in 2002.
One of my neighbors has a dog. I don’t really have a strong desire to be near that particular dog or that particular neighbor. The neighbor is nice enough but tends to be chatty and I don’t really like to talk to people I don’t know all that well. And her dog used to bark at Ginny all the time. Despite my telling her over and again how much I’d love it if she barked back, Ginny never took the bate. Ginny had a bark much bigger than her size. And my neighbor’s dog is small anyway though I don’t know the breed for sure.
With the acception of my parent’s dog Tork, I’m not sure I’m ready to even be in the company of another dog just yet. Someone suggested that very thing to me on my birthday and there was no way I was going to allow such a thing to happen then. Yes, they meant well but using another dog to distract me from thinking about Ginny then would have been a disaster.

You want to know what else was a bad idea? The other day I was curious to see what I could find online in the way of book reviews of books I read and remembered liking in my childhood. I looked up reviews for: ‘The Doll in the Garden: A Ghost Story’ and ‘Wait Till Helen Comes’: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn, ‘Locked in Time’ by Lois Duncan, ‘Johnny Tremain’ by Esther Hoskins Forbes, ‘The Chocolate War’ by Robert Cormier and ‘Murder for Her Majesty’ by Beth Hilgartner. The last one is what got me started on that venture because I read the book as a junior high student, probably 7th grade and had vague memories of the plot but couldn’t remember the title.
Anyway, all was going just fine. ‘Wait Till Helen Comes’ and ‘Locked in Time’ are both books I’ll probably read again in the future. I was having some fun seeing what other people were saying or had said about books I liked. Then I made my mistake.
I knew I was making a mistake before I even made it but that did not stop me from doing it. I looked up one last book. I can say that along with ‘Inside of a Dog’ one other book I will not be revisiting again soon is ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ by Wilson Rawls. I had a tough time when I read the ending of that book in 7th grade. I can’t even imagine what would happen to me if I tried to read it again right now, especially since just reading a summary nearly brought me to tears. That was the end of looking up books from my childhood.

I think I’m going to try and make my next entry a fun one. At least fun for me to write, I’m not entirely sure how you’ll like reading it. But as someone with a visual impairment, I’ve often wondered what my life would look like if I had been able to see. What would I be doing now if I had my vision? I’ve discussed this before with a couple of people but never in any great detail and only with people who have tried to help me find employment. So talking about what I think I’d be doing if I could see might be my next entry. If it isn’t I either chickened out or something more important happened and I wanted to address that first. I guess you’ll see soon enough.

5 thoughts on “Dogs, Books and Books About Dogs”

I haven’t read ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’, but I just looked up what happens at the end. Not a book I could read – it would break my heart.
Isn’t it amazing how we often know we are making a mistake and yet do it anyway? Ah, the error of our human ways!

‘Where the Red Fern Grows’ is really a wonderful book. Despite not having read it in over 20 years, I remember so much of the story. One of those books that can really stick with a person. But yes, that ending is a heartbreaker and will probably be why I don’t read it again any time soon.

Yes, it is weird how sometimes we know what we’re about to do is going to turn out poorly for us but then do it anyway. But then again, perhaps that isn’t always a bad thing. If we learn more from failures than successes perhaps we need to walk into a failure from time to time. At least that’s what I’ll try and tell myself the next time I sense I’m about to look like an idiot and then look like an idiot.